Well, I watched WordGirl with Thing 1, dh, and a good friend this morning. The 30-somethings in the room enjoyed the embedded adult humor (e.g., when resident bad guy, “the butcher” –who rather hilariously hurls meat products at victims– is debilitated in a vegetarian restaurant after being pelted with tofu.) Thing 1 laughed a lot and was excited for the screening. This is the only tv show she’s seen other than Sesame Street (well, save one episode of Dora while visiting a friend in Ithaca 2 years ago), though she has seen 3-4 feature films…at any rate, this was a big deal and everyone was all fired up. Woo-hoo WordGirl.
Anyway, she laughed several times, and asked a bunch of questions (What’s a villian? What do you mean Becky turned into WordGirl?), and did struggle a bit to “get” the idea of two mini segments with shorts in between — just a lot going on for her. So, though she enjoyed herself, she completely got NONE of the vocabulary, but I would certainly let her watch more of it - I love the superheroine idea, it was fun, and I even think in time, she’ll get the vocabulary too. On a personal note, I want to be WordGirl, seriously. At the very least, I really want a t-shirt. Also, My good friend (hi SA) said her 3 year old son loved it and asked for it by name the next day, so overall, sounds like it’s playing well with the juicebox crowd.
In gender adventures at home, we went to a party for dh’s office today and I was amused to see Thing 1 relishing the rough and tunble “boy play” — there were two boys there (ages 4 and 6), and I kept hearing squealing from the basement. After a long, long time, Thing 1 came in to the grown-ups all wide grinned with pony tails askew / hair in her eyes and said, “They are being sooooo silly. You’ve GOT to see this, Mom.” So I went to see the big silliness, who wouldn’t want to - right? The game they had invented was, “let’s jump on Nate.” Aptly titled, it involved her and Ben (age 4) pouncing on Nate (age 6) who was laying on the ground. Not play jumping either, we’re talking professional wrestling smackdown, elbows and all, crushing the kid…and all three of them were red faced and laughing their fool heads off. This is the stuff people forget when they say, “you know how boys are.” Who knows, maybe it was a WordGirl effect, but she was all over it. When we finally dragged her out of the basement, it was a teary separation, and little Ben came out and asked, “Can’t you say goodbye again?” So cute…
Lastly, I have GOT to mention that Thing 1 was just given a “brave girl” t-shirt and bandaid set from her wonderful Godmother (or, as she perfers to be called, Guidemother). They are awesome and created by a young woman with a great story who started and built the business (”Sticker Sisters“) trying to empower young girls. It’s great. Check it out!